Page 106 - MS Year in Review 2020

There were several other contributing factors, including the inability of the firm to

arrange sufficient financing to give it time to try and survive, the unsuccessful entry
of a new president (Robert Jaunich from Consolidated Foods), the unsuccessful
attempts to sell Osborne to another company, and the company’s aborted attempt

to go public. There were also questions about Osborne’s vision and strategy. We
can infer that as the desktop computer (first with the MAC and then with the IBM
PC) became more sophisticated and less expensive, customers were no longer as

tolerant of Osborne’s small, hard-to-read screen. In addition, many competing
machines were IBM compatible, which Osborne’s were not.

THE CLASSIC END GAME FOR THE ICARUS

SYNDROME: OSBORNE COMPUTER’S BANKRUPTCY

The ultimate failure of Osborne Computer was attributable to a combination of
factors, but was precipitated by the slowdown in orders and cash that exacerbated

all its other problems. The root cause was its inability to develop and implement
that processes and systems (“organizational infrastructure”) needed to effectively
and efficiently function as the larger company it had become. It also failed to adjust

to market changes that eventually would have caused other problems.

Implications and Lessons of the Icarus Syndrome at Osborne Computer

After experiencing its initial dazzling success, Adam Osborne recognized that his

company was in crisis, but it is not clear that he knew what to do to address it. He
was experiencing a crisis brought about by what he himself termed “hypergrowth,”

but he did not have the leadership capability., advisors, or tools or knowledge
required to manage it.

Specifically, he did not have a “template” for identifying the underlying causes and
then making the necessary changes to his business. We believe that if Osborne had

used the template represented by the Pyramid of Organizational Development,™ he
would have had a better understanding of what needed to be done at Osborne

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